I put my head in my hands, trying to come to grips with what Carter had just said to me. Then I looked up. “So why did you ask me to do it again? A second time?”
He shrugged. “At that point I figured Caroline needed a sibling. We’d made it through once. We’d make it through again.”
“And now?” I asked, my throat thick with tears.
That was when I finally felt him soften. He sat down beside me. “And now we have another baby, one who is finally ours. I hate that Caroline and Sloane aren’t mine, Ansley. I really do. But I don’t love them any less because of it.”
“So it’s just me you love less,” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks.
He didn’t answer, which was not exactly the response I was looking for. Seeing the pained expression on his face broke something inside me. I knelt down in front of him and took his face in my hands. “I want you to hear me when I say this, Carter. You are the one. You have always been the one. Our lives may not have unraveled as perfectly as we had imagined, but I have never, not for one day, lost sight of the fact that you are the man I was meant to be with. There is no one—and I do mean no one—I would rather share this life with. You are my home, Carter. I never want to live without you.”
He took my hands and said, “Get up off the floor, Ansley. You’re too beautiful for the floor.” When he held me to him, I knew it was going to be OK.
I was still hugging him, resting my head on his shoulder, when Carter sighed and said, “Do you love him?” I could tell by the way he asked it, so quickly and breathily, that he was terrified to learn the answer.
I could have said, “A part of me will always love Jack. He gave us our girls.” The truth was that I had loved him all day, every day for most of my life, and I knew that would never end, no matter how much I wished it would. But, despite that fact, I loved Carter more. I loved my family more. I didn’t like lying to Carter. I never had. In some ways, I felt relieved that I didn’t have this huge secret weighing on me anymore. But I knew better than to push it. So I said, looking out over my husband’s shoulder, “Of course not, Carter. I only love you.”
It was another lie, maybe only the third one I had ever told my husband.
I pulled away from him then, and he said, “I’m so sorry, Ansley. I shouldn’t have said that to you. I never wanted to say that to you.”
“So it’s true then? You weren’t just angry? You really never expected me to get pregnant?”
I saw the pause in his expression, the way he took a moment to think before he answered, like I had only seconds before. He hugged me to him again and said, “Of course that’s not true. I was upset, so I took it out on you. This was the plan. You followed through. End of story.” But he couldn’t look me in the eye when he said it.
It was the second lie we had told each other in as many minutes. But even though I knew he wasn’t telling the truth, his little lie appeased me, just like I’m sure mine had him. Maybe it should have worried me, but it made me feel better. We were both willing to put aside a piece of our truth, a piece of ourselves, to make the other one feel better. And, every now and then, I believe, that’s what real love—the down-and-dirty-in-the-trenches kind—is all about.
I HAD NEVER BEEN so grateful for James. He was going to let us use his NetJet hours to take Sloane home the next day.
I remembered going to visit Sloane on post when Adam was first stationed in North Carolina, decorating her little blue town house and trying to make it feel as comfortable and restful as possible. She had scolded me when we passed the row of stately historic officers’ homes because I had said, “When do I get to decorate one of those for you?”
Adam had laughed, but later, Sloane had said, “I don’t ever want to make him feel like what he does or where we are isn’t good enough.”
I had only been joking, but I felt badly and hoped I hadn’t hurt Adam’s feelings. I truly hadn’t meant to. I admired how he was working his way up with patience and determination.
As a mea culpa, I had a set of antique linen hand towels embroidered for Sloane. Home is Where the Army Sends Us, they read. Where would home be for Sloane now?
Emerson, Caroline, and I packed her bags. We all knew it would be a sleepless night.
This was the moment we had all dreaded over the past months. It was the moment we had wanted to prepare Sloane for, the moment she simply would not accept as a possibility. I realized now it didn’t matter whether she had prepared herself. It would have been impossible to face no matter what.
Jack was making phone calls, sending emails, getting in touch with every politician, military figure, reporter, or investigator he had ever met. But there wasn’t
